6 ms·

Blank cassette tape types and how to choose the right one

54 points by derwiki 4y ago

jeffbee 4y ago
It's odd to make a guide to objectively choosing the "best" cassette. Someone who has chosen cassette tape as a medium has already transcended objectivity and has motivations that do not lie within the plane of rational discourse. You could choose the Maxell XLII because its flat black finish looks bitchin' and that would be as good a reason as any other.
- renewiltord 4y ago
  Pretty nonsensical comment considering this is a common title for the kind of article which says "if you want X, choose A; if you want Y, choose B". And indeed, second paragraph has a summary: Ferric – Type I – high hiss, good bass response Chrome – Type II – Low hiss, good treble response Ferrichrome – Type III – Low hiss, even bass and treble Metal – Type IV – Low hiss, balanced frequencies
- jareklupinski 4y ago
  yup, I bought a random cassette deck ebay that I'm sure was worthy in its time, and only use it to listen to vaporwave / synth music you can't really tell how much wow and flutter it has with that genre it's almost a feature
eweise 4y ago
Back in the record days, I would record the first play of the record to tape, and then listen to the tape so that the record stayed in good condition.
kloch 4y ago
The struggle was real before digital. I always tried to use Type IV Metal tapes and type C NR when supported. The entire line of Metal tapes by TDK were awesome. Then there was the mythical MA-XG which retailed for something like $20/tape in the 1990's. They go for $120 on eBay today https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=tdk+ma-xg&_sacat=0 https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313... I did eventually buy two of them. I tested one (it lived up to the hype) and the other might still be unopened.
TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
Some of this article is just complete nonsense: > Originally developed for studio and live applications, [metal] tapes will produce a low noise recording No one ever used 2- or 4-track cassette recorders in a recording studio. They were used in basements and garages to make home recordings of amateur bands. And those 4-track recorders pre-dated metal tapes anyway. This guy is just making shit up as he goes along. > metal tapes sound closest to a digital recording. No, they don’t. They don’t sound anything like digital recordings and never did. When music started being published on CD in the 80s, no one lamented cassettes going the way of the dinosaur. No one (records, yes). Now there’s a revival, fine. But admit that it’s nostalgia and different than digital, not better.
- ubermonkey 4y ago
  I regret I have only one upvote to give you. I'm 52. I had lots of musician pals in the late 80s, 90s, and early 21st century (still do!). In that era no piece of kit was more coveted by those folks than the 4-track recorders from Tascam or Teac or whatever that worked with regular cassettes. They were game-changers for amateur and aspiring musicians! But then digital audio happened, and real quick anybody with a decent laptop suddenly had access to recording capabilities that only a few years before were only available in professional studios. Shit, Apple even started shipping, for free, a home recording tool that opened the door for a lot of people. Nobody who lived the cassette era, though, misses using them for playback or mixing down to them for demos. Everything about music recording and playback is astoundingly better now than it ever was back then. The level of sonic fidelity you can have in your living room for a couple hundred bucks today is staggering. Hell, the audio quality you get out of a basic iPhone and the earbuds it ships with is stunning vs. what we had access to in 1985 or 1995.
ubermonkey 4y ago
Nothing baffles me more than cassette nostalgia. They were such SHIT for fidelity and quality, and so prone to failure! Digital music on the go is an unalloyed win. With a nice enough rig I guess you MIGHT be able to tell CD source from streamed digital in your living room, but it's unlikely. Vinyl is legitimately fun to use, and with decent gear you'd be surprised by how good it can sound (way better than cassette), but it's nowhere near CD or digital. It is, however, a bit more visceral and intentional, which is nice.
PaulHoule 4y ago
I got into watching techmoan and similar YouTubers who got me interested in vintage audio. I thought seriously about getting into tapes because I have nostalgia for them and saw you could make really great recordings w/ metal tapes and a deck that supports Dolby S…. Decks like that can be had on ebay but the metal tapes are crazy expensive, for what a deck like that costs plus two metal tapes you could probably get two minidisc recorders and 100 discs. Today the new decks all use a cheap mechanism that is reliable but sounds awful. New tapes are ‘type 0’ frequently. On top of that it is really no fun to rewind so I gave up on getting a cassette deck but who knows, if a really elite deck shows up at the community reuse center I might grab it.
- skykooler 4y ago
  > it is really no fun to rewind Does Dolby S have double-sided tapes? For regular cassette tapes I’ve never really had to worry about rewinding because after playing both sides you’re back at the beginning.
  - Tsiklon 4y ago
    Dolby S is a type of noise reduction that’s done in the deck, and actively works on the audio stream as it’s being written to and read from the tape. It’s best used with a high quality tape, but I believe it can be used with any of the 3 major tape types.
- derwiki 4y ago
  Do you have tips on a good tape deck model, or manufacturer that consistently made high quality decks? A friend gave me his old Sony TC-W365 which worked admirably, until recent mechanical failures.
  - tenebrisalietum 4y ago
    I have a TC-WE525 circa 1999 or 2000 that stopped working - when I would start a tape playing, it would play for a second, then stop, like it got to the end of the tape. The belts disintegrate over time and must be replaced. I successfully repaired mine from a belt kit I was able to get on Amazon. It's not terribly easy to replace the belts but I did manage to do it.
arielweisberg 4y ago
Can I get a DSP filter or something to simulate tape and skip the tape :-) It seems like everything about records and tape is not really technically superior and the sound signature could be emulated.
- squidsoup 4y ago
  Yes, there is some great tape emulation out there (uHe's Satin is killer https://u-he.com/products/satin/ https://u-he.com/products/satin/), but tape machines aren't desirable for the sound alone - they can be instruments in their own right. Allesandro Cortini from NiN is an artist that uses tape very effectively in his live performances for example (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdbgEHsPkes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdbgEHsPkes).
  - trynewideas 4y ago
    See also looping tapes: https://www.guerrilladigital.cc/2021/03/10/i-spent-the-last-two-weeks-researching-and-making-endless-cassette-loop-tapes-and-this-is-what-i-learned/ https://www.guerrilladigital.cc/2021/03/10/i-spent-the-last-... and anything AMULETS does: https://cdm.link/2017/01/heres-make-tape-loop-cassette-tape/ https://cdm.link/2017/01/heres-make-tape-loop-cassette-tape/ https://www.youtube.com/@amuletsmusic/videos https://www.youtube.com/@amuletsmusic/videos
    - inasmuch 4y ago
      See also DJing (TJing?) tapes! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urGmmkUDi20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urGmmkUDi20
- UncleOxidant 4y ago
  Yeah, I really don't get the nostalgia, but maybe it's because I lived much of my life in the vinyl and then cassette tape eras. There are so many downsides to both. Vinyl records take up a lot of space and they degrade just a little bit every time you play them unless you have a very expensive laser player and even then...). Cassettes also degrade quite quickly and the sound was never that great with cassettes. Of the two, though, vinyl nostalgia is a bit more understandable because you can watch the record rotate and the theory of operation is quite simple.
caned 4y ago
New production, Type II cassette tapes are available from ATR Magnetics, e.g.: https://www.atrtape.com/products/atr-magnetics-colbalt-silver-series-type-ii-cassette https://www.atrtape.com/products/atr-magnetics-colbalt-silve...
taylodl 4y ago
What we need is an audio playback tool allowing you to select VST plugins into the playback chain. We already have VST's mimicking tape playback (and they're good!). We even have VST's mimicking LP vinyl playback - complete with dust and hiss. Plug those into your audio playback app and voila! You can re-create any of the old sounds you want!
- lancesells 4y ago
  Have any VST's to recommend for those things?
- palmaltd 4y ago
  Soundsource [0] on macOS can do this! I run Chow Tape [1] and it performs quite admirably. I've never measured the latency but it has never affected me much. I'm certain a similar solution is available on Linux. To be fair, (quite janky, ime) VST hosts are available for Windows, via the music player (e.g. Musicbee) or system-wide, but those have never been reliable. Your mileage will vary. [0] https://rogueamoeba.com/soundsource/ https://rogueamoeba.com/soundsource/ [1] https://github.com/jatinchowdhury18/AnalogTapeModel/tree/develop https://github.com/jatinchowdhury18/AnalogTapeModel/tree/dev...
UncleOxidant 4y ago
You know, there was a time when we used to save our programs on cassette tapes. I don't wanna go back there, but maybe some of the youngsters who are nostalgic for cassettes would like to try that out? Maybe GitHub could have a 'save to cassette' button on repos and then make money by sending you the cassette? ("Only $9.95 + shipping & handling")
- buildsjets 4y ago
  GitHub has some old software-on-cassette already. The best part is you don't need a cassette player to use it, just connect the headphone jack of your cellphone (if the manufacturer wasn't courageous enough to remove it) to the casette-in port of your favorite 8-bit machine and hit play on the WAV file from GitHub. https://github.com/sonic2000gr/TI99 https://github.com/sonic2000gr/TI99
  - cpsns 4y ago
    You can build a device to do this yourself over a serial port. https://maker.pro/pcb/projects/make-uart-cassette-tape-interface https://maker.pro/pcb/projects/make-uart-cassette-tape-inter...
  - codazoda 4y ago
    I do this with an old TRS-80 and a digital voice recorder. I just made up a cable to hook them up.
- LeoPanthera 4y ago
  If you still have a working Acorn Electron or BBC Micro computer you can load software into it directly from a web page using only an audio cable with PlayUEF: https://www.8bitkick.cc/playuef.html https://www.8bitkick.cc/playuef.html
- fatnoah 4y ago
  I had the cassette drive for my C64, and I remember just how amazingly long it took to load and save even the most trivial things.

54 points by derwiki 4y ago

It's odd to make a guide to objectively choosing the "best" cassette. Someone who has chosen cassette tape as a medium has already transcended objectivity and has motivations that do not lie within the plane of rational discourse. You could choose the Maxell XLII because its flat black finish looks bitchin' and that would be as good a reason as any other.

renewiltord 4y ago
Pretty nonsensical comment considering this is a common title for the kind of article which says "if you want X, choose A; if you want Y, choose B". And indeed, second paragraph has a summary: Ferric – Type I – high hiss, good bass response Chrome – Type II – Low hiss, good treble response Ferrichrome – Type III – Low hiss, even bass and treble Metal – Type IV – Low hiss, balanced frequencies
jareklupinski 4y ago
yup, I bought a random cassette deck ebay that I'm sure was worthy in its time, and only use it to listen to vaporwave / synth music you can't really tell how much wow and flutter it has with that genre it's almost a feature

eweise 4y ago

Back in the record days, I would record the first play of the record to tape, and then listen to the tape so that the record stayed in good condition.

kloch 4y ago

The struggle was real before digital. I always tried to use Type IV Metal tapes and type C NR when supported. The entire line of Metal tapes by TDK were awesome. Then there was the mythical MA-XG which retailed for something like $20/tape in the 1990's. They go for $120 on eBay today https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=tdk+ma-xg&_sacat=0 https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313... I did eventually buy two of them. I tested one (it lived up to the hype) and the other might still be unopened.

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago

Some of this article is just complete nonsense: > Originally developed for studio and live applications, [metal] tapes will produce a low noise recording No one ever used 2- or 4-track cassette recorders in a recording studio. They were used in basements and garages to make home recordings of amateur bands. And those 4-track recorders pre-dated metal tapes anyway. This guy is just making shit up as he goes along. > metal tapes sound closest to a digital recording. No, they don’t. They don’t sound anything like digital recordings and never did. When music started being published on CD in the 80s, no one lamented cassettes going the way of the dinosaur. No one (records, yes). Now there’s a revival, fine. But admit that it’s nostalgia and different than digital, not better.

ubermonkey 4y ago
I regret I have only one upvote to give you. I'm 52. I had lots of musician pals in the late 80s, 90s, and early 21st century (still do!). In that era no piece of kit was more coveted by those folks than the 4-track recorders from Tascam or Teac or whatever that worked with regular cassettes. They were game-changers for amateur and aspiring musicians! But then digital audio happened, and real quick anybody with a decent laptop suddenly had access to recording capabilities that only a few years before were only available in professional studios. Shit, Apple even started shipping, for free, a home recording tool that opened the door for a lot of people. Nobody who lived the cassette era, though, misses using them for playback or mixing down to them for demos. Everything about music recording and playback is astoundingly better now than it ever was back then. The level of sonic fidelity you can have in your living room for a couple hundred bucks today is staggering. Hell, the audio quality you get out of a basic iPhone and the earbuds it ships with is stunning vs. what we had access to in 1985 or 1995.

ubermonkey 4y ago

Nothing baffles me more than cassette nostalgia. They were such SHIT for fidelity and quality, and so prone to failure! Digital music on the go is an unalloyed win. With a nice enough rig I guess you MIGHT be able to tell CD source from streamed digital in your living room, but it's unlikely. Vinyl is legitimately fun to use, and with decent gear you'd be surprised by how good it can sound (way better than cassette), but it's nowhere near CD or digital. It is, however, a bit more visceral and intentional, which is nice.

PaulHoule 4y ago

I got into watching techmoan and similar YouTubers who got me interested in vintage audio. I thought seriously about getting into tapes because I have nostalgia for them and saw you could make really great recordings w/ metal tapes and a deck that supports Dolby S…. Decks like that can be had on ebay but the metal tapes are crazy expensive, for what a deck like that costs plus two metal tapes you could probably get two minidisc recorders and 100 discs. Today the new decks all use a cheap mechanism that is reliable but sounds awful. New tapes are ‘type 0’ frequently. On top of that it is really no fun to rewind so I gave up on getting a cassette deck but who knows, if a really elite deck shows up at the community reuse center I might grab it.

skykooler 4y ago
> it is really no fun to rewind Does Dolby S have double-sided tapes? For regular cassette tapes I’ve never really had to worry about rewinding because after playing both sides you’re back at the beginning.
- Tsiklon 4y ago
  Dolby S is a type of noise reduction that’s done in the deck, and actively works on the audio stream as it’s being written to and read from the tape. It’s best used with a high quality tape, but I believe it can be used with any of the 3 major tape types.
derwiki 4y ago
Do you have tips on a good tape deck model, or manufacturer that consistently made high quality decks? A friend gave me his old Sony TC-W365 which worked admirably, until recent mechanical failures.
- tenebrisalietum 4y ago
  I have a TC-WE525 circa 1999 or 2000 that stopped working - when I would start a tape playing, it would play for a second, then stop, like it got to the end of the tape. The belts disintegrate over time and must be replaced. I successfully repaired mine from a belt kit I was able to get on Amazon. It's not terribly easy to replace the belts but I did manage to do it.

arielweisberg 4y ago

Can I get a DSP filter or something to simulate tape and skip the tape :-) It seems like everything about records and tape is not really technically superior and the sound signature could be emulated.

squidsoup 4y ago
Yes, there is some great tape emulation out there (uHe's Satin is killer https://u-he.com/products/satin/ https://u-he.com/products/satin/), but tape machines aren't desirable for the sound alone - they can be instruments in their own right. Allesandro Cortini from NiN is an artist that uses tape very effectively in his live performances for example (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdbgEHsPkes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdbgEHsPkes).
- trynewideas 4y ago
  See also looping tapes: https://www.guerrilladigital.cc/2021/03/10/i-spent-the-last-two-weeks-researching-and-making-endless-cassette-loop-tapes-and-this-is-what-i-learned/ https://www.guerrilladigital.cc/2021/03/10/i-spent-the-last-... and anything AMULETS does: https://cdm.link/2017/01/heres-make-tape-loop-cassette-tape/ https://cdm.link/2017/01/heres-make-tape-loop-cassette-tape/ https://www.youtube.com/@amuletsmusic/videos https://www.youtube.com/@amuletsmusic/videos
  - inasmuch 4y ago
    See also DJing (TJing?) tapes! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urGmmkUDi20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urGmmkUDi20
UncleOxidant 4y ago
Yeah, I really don't get the nostalgia, but maybe it's because I lived much of my life in the vinyl and then cassette tape eras. There are so many downsides to both. Vinyl records take up a lot of space and they degrade just a little bit every time you play them unless you have a very expensive laser player and even then...). Cassettes also degrade quite quickly and the sound was never that great with cassettes. Of the two, though, vinyl nostalgia is a bit more understandable because you can watch the record rotate and the theory of operation is quite simple.

caned 4y ago

New production, Type II cassette tapes are available from ATR Magnetics, e.g.: https://www.atrtape.com/products/atr-magnetics-colbalt-silver-series-type-ii-cassette https://www.atrtape.com/products/atr-magnetics-colbalt-silve...

taylodl 4y ago

What we need is an audio playback tool allowing you to select VST plugins into the playback chain. We already have VST's mimicking tape playback (and they're good!). We even have VST's mimicking LP vinyl playback - complete with dust and hiss. Plug those into your audio playback app and voila! You can re-create any of the old sounds you want!

lancesells 4y ago
Have any VST's to recommend for those things?
palmaltd 4y ago
Soundsource [0] on macOS can do this! I run Chow Tape [1] and it performs quite admirably. I've never measured the latency but it has never affected me much. I'm certain a similar solution is available on Linux. To be fair, (quite janky, ime) VST hosts are available for Windows, via the music player (e.g. Musicbee) or system-wide, but those have never been reliable. Your mileage will vary. [0] https://rogueamoeba.com/soundsource/ https://rogueamoeba.com/soundsource/ [1] https://github.com/jatinchowdhury18/AnalogTapeModel/tree/develop https://github.com/jatinchowdhury18/AnalogTapeModel/tree/dev...

UncleOxidant 4y ago

You know, there was a time when we used to save our programs on cassette tapes. I don't wanna go back there, but maybe some of the youngsters who are nostalgic for cassettes would like to try that out? Maybe GitHub could have a 'save to cassette' button on repos and then make money by sending you the cassette? ("Only $9.95 + shipping & handling")

buildsjets 4y ago
GitHub has some old software-on-cassette already. The best part is you don't need a cassette player to use it, just connect the headphone jack of your cellphone (if the manufacturer wasn't courageous enough to remove it) to the casette-in port of your favorite 8-bit machine and hit play on the WAV file from GitHub. https://github.com/sonic2000gr/TI99 https://github.com/sonic2000gr/TI99
- cpsns 4y ago
  You can build a device to do this yourself over a serial port. https://maker.pro/pcb/projects/make-uart-cassette-tape-interface https://maker.pro/pcb/projects/make-uart-cassette-tape-inter...
- codazoda 4y ago
  I do this with an old TRS-80 and a digital voice recorder. I just made up a cable to hook them up.
LeoPanthera 4y ago
If you still have a working Acorn Electron or BBC Micro computer you can load software into it directly from a web page using only an audio cable with PlayUEF: https://www.8bitkick.cc/playuef.html https://www.8bitkick.cc/playuef.html
fatnoah 4y ago
I had the cassette drive for my C64, and I remember just how amazingly long it took to load and save even the most trivial things.